Literally Disturbed #1 Read online

  TALES TO KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT

  by Ben H. Winters

  illustrated by Adam F. Watkins

  This book is for Milly, but not for now. When she’s a little older—BW

  PRICE STERN SLOAN

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  Penguin China, B7 Jiaming Center, 27 East Third Ring Road North, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Illustrations copyright © 2013 Adam F. Watkins. All rights reserved. Published by Price Stern Sloan, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. PSS! is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Manufactured in China.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN: 978-0-698-15931-0

  Table of Contents

  SCARY STORIES

  BLACK CAT

  WITCHES IN STORIES

  THE ATTIC

  IT’S NOT JUST A COLD

  THE NOISE

  A MONSTER CONFESSES

  THE SHIP

  FULL MOON

  THE STATUE

  WHEN I’M A GHOST

  SOMEONE’S GOT A VOODOO DOLL

  BATS

  I’M NOT SCARED OF NOTHING

  THE DEEP END

  A PREDICTION

  WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE DOG?

  POOR THING

  OLD TREE

  HOW I CHECK FOR MONSTERS BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP

  OUIJA BOARD

  ZOMBIES

  WHAT HAPPENED TO LITTLE JAN BANKS?

  HEADLESS HORSEMAN

  SHADOWS

  THE WITCHES OF EAST McCLINTOCK STREET

  THE BITE

  HIKING

  THE VAMPIRE SLEEPS

  YOU’RE A SKELETON

  SCARY STORIES

  You shiver,

  your heart going tap-tappa-tap.

  You quiver

  and leap into somebody’s lap.

  You discover

  your mouth’s hanging open—yet you can’t speak.

  You cover

  your face with your trembling hands—

  then you peek.

  The stories sound real.

  (At least that’s how you feel,

  though you know, in your heart, that they ain’t.)

  You say, “Can’t fool me.”

  “There’s no way.” “It can’t be!”

  You stand up, you sit down,

  you nearly faint.

  But you listen,

  to stories of vampires and zombies galore,

  to stories of hauntings and murder and gore,

  and each one more scary than what came before—

  till at last you leap up and race out the door!

  Then crack it open

  and say, “Hey, I was hopin’ you

  could maybe just tell me one more?”

  BLACK CAT

  There’s a cat named Raina

  at the end of our street,

  who’s all black with one patch of white hairs.

  Just a fuzzy old kitty

  with thin yellow eyes,

  who sits in her window and stares.

  Now, Charlie says Raina’s

  not really a cat;

  Charlie insists she’s a witch.

  He says that cat

  is her earthly form,

  and if you watch her at midnight

  she’ll switch.

  Evelyn says Raina’s

  not really a cat;

  she’s a ghost, is what Evelyn swears.

  Raina sees visions

  from life’s other side

  when she sits in her window and stares.

  Taylor says Raina’s

  not really a cat;

  she’s a monster, a man-eating beast.

  When Raina sits staring

  what she’s doing is waiting

  for a chance to set off for a feast.

  I don’t know about any of that.

  But I don’t get too close to the cat.

  WITCHES IN STORIES

  Witches in stories catch neighborhood strays

  and cackle while dreaming up terrible ways

  to mistreat ’em.

  Witches in stories fly around on their brooms.

  They lure wicked children to gingerbread rooms

  and eat ’em.

  Witches in stories are skinny and mean.

  Their faces are ugly; their skin is all green

  and warty.

  Witches survive on the souls that they’ve plundered.

  They hide out in forests and live to a hundred

  and forty.

  They’re at their most happy when others are not,

  singing off-key while they circle a pot

  in slow motion.

  Witches in stories like horrible things:

  gathering toad’s blood and ladybug wings

  for a potion.

  Mrs. McFleatcher,

  our substitute teacher,

  is terribly kind.

  She is sweet and refined,

  and she’s pretty and funny and tall,

  and her skin is not green, not at all.

  Her singing voice is lovely and rich—

  each day she leads chorus precisely on pitch—

  and yet

  I bet

  she’s a witch.

  THE ATTIC

  Come on up to the attic.

  Come up if you dare.

  Climb up the rickety ladder—

  come up and see what’s there.

  A dressmaker’s dummy:

  no arms and no head.

  A locked black trunk,

  an old, broken bed.

  Something largish and lumpy,

  all wrapped up in a rug.

  In every corner a spiderweb,

  or a mousetrap or roach trap or bug.

  And there’s the old bike

  you loved as a tyke.

  The wheels are all bent, and it’s rusty.

  And here is a box

  filled with T-shirts and socks,

  all of them moldy and musty.

  And it stinks,

  and it’s dark,

  and it’s dusty.

  And from a shadowy corner is gleaming

  a pair of cold, mysterious eyes.

  And what is that rustling, whispering noise?

  A sound that you can’t recogni
ze.

  So let’s climb back down from the attic.

  Let’s close the door quickly, and then

  we’ll bolt the door of the attic,

  and never go up there again.

  IT’S NOT JUST A COLD

  Ah-choo!

  Uh-oh.

  Ah-CHOO!

  Oh no.

  Have a seat on my bed, if you would, Mom and Dad.

  ’Cause I have some news to relate, and it’s BAD.

  Sick? No, I wish. I’m not sick. I’ve been CURSED,

  and I’m basically DOOMED, and it can’t be reversed.

  This happened to Rohan, from school, last December.

  First sneezing, then poof! He’s a frog—you remember?

  The only faint glimmer of hope that we’ve got

  are swamp grasses grown in some dark, swampy spot,

  which we’ll harvest at quarter past twelve on the dot,

  then mash up with pig hearts we’ve left out to rot.

  This we crush into a powder, then mix in a drink

  with bat bile and snake blood and India ink.

  Then I’ll drink it, roll over, and stand on my head

  while you sprinkle candle wax over my bed.

  Then we get a chicken and feed it a—Yes?

  The doctor?

  Well, sure, we can try it, I guess.

  THE NOISE

  What is that terrible noise,

  filling up the night air all around?

  It sounds like a beast

  getting down to its feast

  with a sickening, lip-smacking sound.

  What’s that unbearable noise?

  It sounds like the grinding of bones!

  Like the gnashing of jaws

  and the tearing of claws

  and the dashing of skulls onto stones.

  What is that horrible noise?

  There’s a whole nother part to it now!

  It started with BANG

  and ended with CLANG!

  In the middle was something like ow.

  That god-awful noise!

  Like the splash of young boys

  being tossed in a pot to make stew!

  A horrible yelp, voices calling for help—

  getting closer and closer and . . . hey.

  Just a second, I think that it . . . say.

  Am I . . . whoa.

  Is it . . . oh.

  That noise, I think, has now faded.

  We’re in luck; something made it disperse.

  Listen—try it—

  it’s suddenly quiet,

  and the quiet . . .

  the quiet . . .

  is worse.

  A MONSTER CONFESSES

  I eat children.

  There, I said it.

  I’d eat YOU next if I could.

  If I saw you on the street,

  I’d say, “There goes some children meat!”

  And slather you in ketchup, yes, I would.

  You eat chicken.

  You eat pork.

  I’d eat YOU with a knife and fork.

  I’d wash you down with some lemonade

  or a glass of sweet iced tea.

  You go to school, you’re four feet tall,

  and I’m sure you’re very nice and all,

  but you’re just a talking hamburger to me.

  THE SHIP

  Out on the sea

  (the deadly sea,

  the tossing and terrible sea!)

  there sails a ship,

  a PIRATE ship,

  with a cap’n as cruel as can be!

  Aboard that ship

  (that hideous ship,

  that awful, invidious ship!)

  all day ye can hear

  the crew shout in fear,

  and the snap of the cap’n’s long whip!

  (I mean it—it’s not a nice ship.)

  When will they take rest?

  When will they find land?

  When will they drop their oars in the sand?

  The answer, you’ve guessed it, is never!

  ’Cause they’re ghosts, pirate ghosts,

  and on they row.

  All of ’em drowned ten decades ago,

  and they’ll be rowing now forever.

  Out on the sea

  (the endless sea,

  the roiling and dangerous sea!)

  there sails a ship,

  a lonesome ship,

  with the cap’n so mean to his crew.

  So, kid, listen up: Live a life good and long,

  and if ye think to do wrong,

  he’s savin’ a seat there for YOU.

  FULL MOON

  Once a month,

  the moon gets fat;

  the world gets weird.

  Imagine that.

  Big full moon,

  gold and clear,

  casts a spell

  on us down here.

  Some folks cut loose,

  play funny games;

  twins switch places with their brothers.

  Some folks get mean,

  fight and call names,

  make rude comments to their mothers.

  Oh, the moon is strange;

  it makes us change—

  and some of us change more than others.

  THE STATUE

  Things have been odd round here lately;

  one big, happy family we’re not

  since Daddy got home from the yard sale

  and showed off the statue he got:

  a monkey with glowing green eyes.

  He got it for practically nothing.

  “Isn’t it gorgeous?” he said.

  But Mom didn’t find it so charming.

  So we stuck it out back, in the shed:

  the monkey with glowing green eyes.

  Now me and my brothers are fighting;

  we argue and bicker and lie.

  Mom’s moody, and Dad’s always quiet,

  and I think that I’ve figured out why:

  It’s the monkey with glowing green eyes.

  On Wednesday I went to bed early—

  put my pj’s on, got tucked in tight.

  And then woke up at three in the morning

  in the shed, in the cold, eerie light

  of the monkey with glowing green eyes.

  So on Thursday it was out with the garbage,

  and we smiled as we said our good-byes.

  But that night, after we’d had our supper,

  just imagine our looks of surprise.

  Because somehow, there it was on the mantel—

  grinning down at us, wicked and wise—

  the monkey with glowing green eyes.

  The monkey with glowing green eyes.

  WHEN I’M A GHOST

  I used to want to be a teacher,

  veterinarian, or preacher,

  or the guy who tells the weather on TV.

  But now what I want to be the most

  is a superscary ghost.

  I’m serious. That’s the job for me.

  I’ll be grim!

  I’ll be dreary!

  I’ll be spooky!

  I’ll be eerie

  when I do my scare-o-rific ghostly dance.

  Yes, I’m wanting

  to be haunting!

  To be mean

  and unseen

  till I yell “BOO!” and make you pee your pants.

  First I’ll haunt the kids who giggled

  when I fell down in the gym.

  And that nasty old bus driver?

  Oh yes! Definitely him.

  There’s only one problem—

  it’s a big one, I won’t lie.

  If you’re gonna be a ghost,

  well, then first you’ve got to DIE.

  SOMEONE’S GOT A VOODOO DOLL

  Ow!

  Hey!

  My leg! My foot! My arm!

  Someone’s got a voodoo doll, and they want to do me harm!

  Ouch!

  Whoa!<
br />
  My butt! My thigh! My neck!

  Whoever’s got this voodoo doll is jabbing it like heck!

  Ah!

  Shoot!

  My cheek! My chin! My knee!

  Each poke at that darn voodoo doll becomes a poke at me!

  All right, you all, who’s doing this?

  Confess, and—ouch! Ooh!

  Come on, you brat, stop doing that!

  Or I’ll make a doll of you.

  BATS

  Creepy things

  with leathery wings.

  They come out at night

  and fly and bite.

  They’ll swarm around your head—

  so be careful if you’re tall.

  But the worst thing about bats?

  Some aren’t bats at all.

  I’M NOT SCARED OF NOTHING

  I’m not scared of NOTHING.

  I mean it, I tell ya! I’m TOUGH!

  I’m not scared of no monsters or spooks,

  none of that silly old stuff.

  Vampires? Ha!

  Zombies? Bah!

  I’ll invite ’em all over for tea!

  To ghosts I say, “Boo,”

  to witches, “Pooh-pooh”—

  it’s THEM who should be frightened of ME.

  I’m not scared of NOTHING.

  No lizard, piranha, or bug.

  Bring me a big, hungry grizzly bear,

  and I’ll turn him into a rug.

  A bully? I’ll fight him.

  A bulldog? I’ll bite him.

  I’m fearless—no kidding—it’s true!

  Tigers? No sweat.

  Lions? Don’t fret.

  I’ll show ’em the way to the zoo.

  And now it is time for this fearless young soul

  to lay down to sleep for the night.

  So tuck me in tightly, and please don’t forget

  to leave on just one little light.

  THE DEEP END

  You can’t see too well underwater.

  Everything looks dark.

  My cousin’s roommate’s dentist

  was eaten by a shark.

  You can’t scream underwater,

  or say, “Come and help me, please!”

  when a tentacle tickles your torso,

  grabs you tight, and starts to squeeze.

  Most likely there’s no danger

  here in the lap pool at the Y.

  But if you need me,

  you will find me

  on a beach chair, nice and dry.

  A PREDICTION